PORTLAND, Ore. — All southbound lanes on the Interstate 5 bridge will close Saturday night for maintenance, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation. All overnight southbound traffic on I-5 will need to detour on State Route 14 to reach Interstate 205 and cross on the Glenn Jackson Bridge.
The closure will begin at 10:30 p.m. Saturday, and southbound span of the bridge will reopen to traffic by 6 a.m. Sunday, ODOT said. The sidewalk on the southbound span will be closed as well, but the sidewalk on the northbound span will remain open for pedestrians to cross in both directions.
The closure is primarily for maintenance, according to ODOT. Crews will raise the southbound span's drawbridge to make sure it's in good working order for the winter, and will also check the barrier gates, patch potholes on the bridge and perform other maintenance on the bridge's light fixtures.
The Interstate Bridge is jointly owned by Oregon and Washington but is maintained by ODOT. The two states are working on a project to replace the aging twin bridges, but in the meantime the spans require ongoing maintenance for their lift systems, including periodic nighttime closures.
The northbound span, which is the older of the two by four decades, had to go through a much more extensive closure in 2020 to replace a key component of the lift system. That closure lasted for days, so in that case ODOT rearranged things so northbound and southbound traffic would share a single span during the project.
